How to Take Advantage of Google’s Search Plus Your World

According to the Google site, “when signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow”. This new feature has some pretty important consequences for businesses – good and bad. Which will you choose?

If you haven’t seen the search plus your world action, here’s what it looks like:

Here I’ve searched content marketing and it’s saying there are 120 people I’m connected to who have +’d a website regarding content marketing. It shows some of the results on page 1 and which of my connections shared it.

Why is this important?

1. Because those personal searches are replacing search results from companies who may be using the best SEO techniques out there.

2. Because people like personal recommendations. I’m more likely to read something if someone I know has recommended the content.

Yes, there is the option to turn off personal search (it’s the default), but I’ll probably quickly scan the initial results and if I see something interesting I’ll stop looking.

What should businesses do?

1. Don’t ignore Google’s personal search. Since the Google+ roll out, Google has been integrating a lot of its features. Obviously they know Google Search is the most popular and they want to get more users on Google+, so combining the two makes sense for them.

2. Set up a Google+ brand page. Mashable has a good “how to set up a Google+ brand page”. It’s actually really easy to do! Then you can “plus” your own content and share it on the page.

3. Put a Google+ icon on your website pages and encourage users to “plus” your content. Choose the type of button and get the code.

4. Continue to create brilliant content that people will want to share.

What’s clear is that even sites with the best SEO aren’t making the cut to coveted Page 1. SEO is still very important, but content is starting to dominate the landscape. Don’t fall behind your competition.

Question: What are you waiting for? Go make a brand page and come back and share it with me!

ps. Don’t forget to “plus” this blog post (see top right of the page).